Dr. Grey Stafford with the World Wildlife Zoo says that serving a threatened species sends the wrong message. "Of all the plentiful things to eat in this country, for someone to request that or to offer that... I was rather stunned," says Stafford.

There is a minor problem that not every species adjusts well to captivity. For example, in the era just before sheep and goats were domesticated in the middle east, archeological evidence shows that gazelles were the biggest meat source. There must have been attempts to domesticate gazelles but it turned out to be easier to raise sheep.

I don't think that applies to lions. They adjust fairly well to zoos and circuses.

LoneSnark:

That just makes them harder to farm. If the animals kill themselves on fences, don't put up fences. Use walls, moats, or whatever else Disney's Animal Kingdom invented. Sure, barbed wire is cheap, so not being able to use it will dramatically drive up the price of the meat, but the nice thing about markets is the price will rise to cover real costs of production.

Geoff, as Annon said, Humans have not always used private property, so many animals have and continue to fall victim to the tragedy of the commons. Animals are still unowned in Zimbabwe, so they are dying off, while in Kenya the exact same animals are thriving, because people will pay money to shoot them.

Some other guy:

Ultimately, feed conversion rates are going to keep most predator meat out of the food stream. If it takes 10 pounds of beef to make one pound of lion, it's going to be a lot less expensive just to eat the cow in the first place.

It's not a coincidence that virtually all domesticated animals eat things like grass, brush, and rough grains that humans can't digest directly.

What seems to have doomed the dodo was that as a species it responded to limitations in food supply by slowing its reproductive rate rather than by expanding its range.

jayh:

I red flag any instance of the phrase 'sending the wrong message'. It's a virtual guarantee that the spokesman has lost the logical argument and is replacing it with a kind of 'psychic harm' projection (with the harm being determined by his own gut feelings rather than any rational basis.)

Cattle are probably about the most successful large animal on the planet, millions of them on every continent except Antartica. Indeed in more than a humorous, ironic sense, being tasty indeed is a survival advantage.

Hunted animals are more precarious than farmed ones but in many cases, game animals have indeed thrived (hunters are often the strongest supporters of conservation)

Of course there are always counter examples (the tortoise is easy to catch and very slow growing). Farming has made the otherwise vulnerable alligator both an economic success and a survival success.

Pat Moffitt:

And many have also forgotten it was petroleum and coal that saved the whales- not Greenpeace. There was no moral outcry against killing whales 100+ years ago- just simple economics of kerosene replacing whale oil to light our homes.